BattleTech

When I was a young kid I played games like Monopoly, Chutes & ladders and Candy Land. When I was a somewhat older kid, I was introduced to Dungeons & Dragons and this proved to be a gateway game to Call of Cthulhu,Battletech, Star Fleet Battles, Gamma World, and video games of all sorts. I am still a gamer today—a big bag of many-sided dice and exotic gaming mice dwell within my house.

Over the years, I have learned many lessons from gaming. One of these is keep rolling. This is, not surprisingly, similar to the classic advice of “keep trying” and the idea is basically the same. However, there is some interesting philosophy behind “keep rolling.”

Most of the games I have played feature actual dice or virtual dice (that is, randomness) that are used to determine how things go in the game. To use a very simple example, the dice rolls in Monopoly determine how far your piece moves. In vastly more complicated games like Pathfinder or Destiny the dice (or random number generators) govern such things as attacks, damage, saving throws, loot, non-player character reactions and, in short, much of what happens in the game. For most of these games, the core mechanics are built around what is supposed to be a random system. For example, in games like Pathfinder when your character attacks the dragon with her great sword, a roll of a 20-sided die determines whether you hit or not. If you do hit, then you roll more dice to determine your damage.

Having played these sorts of games for years, I can think very well in terms of chance and randomness when planning tactics and strategies within such games. On the one hand, a lucky roll can result in victory in the face of overwhelming odds. On the other hand, a bad roll can seize defeat from the jaws of victory. But, in general, success is more likely if one does not give up and keeps on rolling.

This lesson translates very easily and obviously to life. There are, of course, many models and theories of how the real world works. Some theories present the world as deterministic—all that happens occurs as it must and things cannot be otherwise. Others present a pre-determined world (or pre-destined): all that happens occurs as it has been ordained and cannot be otherwise. Still other models present a random universe.

As a gamer, I favor the random universe model: God does play dice with us and He often rolls them hard. The reason for this belief is that the dice/random model of gaming seems to work when applied to the actual world—as such, my belief is mostly pragmatic. Since games are supposed to model parts of reality, it is hardly surprising that there is a match up. Based on my own experience, the world does seem to work rather like a game: success and failure seem to involve chance.

As a philosopher, I recognize this could simply be a matter of epistemology: the apparent chance could be the result of our ignorance rather than an actual randomness. To use the obvious analogy, the game master might not be rolling dice behind her screen at all and what happens might be determined or pre-determined. Unlike in a game, the rule system for reality is not accessible: it is guessed at by what we observe and we learn the game of life solely by playing.

That said, the dice model seems to fit experience best: I try to do something and succeed or fail with a degree of apparent randomness. Because I believe that randomness is a factor, I consider that my failure to reach a goal could be partially due to chance. So, if I want to achieve that goal, I roll again. And again. Until I succeed or decide that the game is not worth the roll. Not being a fool, I do consider that success might be impossible—but I do not infer that from one or even a few bad rolls. This approach to life has served me well and will no doubt do so until it finally kills me.

A few days ago I was doing Google searches at the behest of Florence (no, that is not her pictured to the right). Despite the fact that I was searching for information about glass fusing and things she wanted to make out of fused glass, I noticed that pictures of naked buttocks would appear in the search results. Now, if she had planned on making fused glass images of butts, this would not be a surprise. But, the searches were for things that had nothing to do with buttocks.

After a bit more searching on various non-butt related key words, I came to the conclusion that butts would appear in almost any Google search, even non-butt searches. For example, I did a search on a battlemech from the old BattleTech game, a Warhammer 6D (which looks nothing like a butt). On the second page of search results for images was, you guessed it, someone’s naked ass.

This gave me an idea for a Google game: get some friends together to play the Google Buttocks Game (or Google Ass Game, if you prefer).

Here are the rules:

Each player takes a turn picking a non-buttocks related word or words for the search.

Each player then writes down the number of the page in the search where s/he thinks an image of a butt will appear.

For each page a person is off, s/he gets a point.

If there is a question about whether the image qualifies as a buttocks picture, the matter is settled by a group vote. If the challenger loses the vote, he gets a penalty point added to his score.

At the end of the game (usually when the boss shows up and says “stop looking at asses!”) the player with the least points is the winner or “ass master” if you prefer.

The game can also be played using other “naughty bits” of the body. The game can also be changed so that the part (butt or whatever) has to be naked rather than clothed to count.